Morning all, just joined the site a couple of days ago because I had an idea I wanted to work on. It's called The Assassin Snail and I've finished my first draft of it. I'm not 100% happy with it yet, so was hoping someone would take a minute to cast their eyes over it and let me know what they think.

Feel free to be as picky as you like, I'm more than happy to work with people to get this right!

I had a couple of extra ideas for it, but wasn't sure if they were necessary.

Making further mention of how SLOW the snail is, something about a past victim only being able to be killed because s/he was hospitalised and thus still for a prolonged period of time.

Potentially adding a third victim. Was trying to think who else a snail could target?

Not mentioning individual victims, but just saying that the snail is always pursuing another victim. So, this would necessitate containing it or it would (eventually) kill the entire population of the planet.

"Cornu" should be capitalised, if we go by the naming scheme for scientific names.

SCP-xxx has an exceedingly slow movement speed

How slow is it? Can you put it in perspective? Is it slow for a snail? Or is it slow to a human? The fact that you blackbox the speed is only hindering the article.

First thing, I think you should leave "How it was found" to the latter parts of the description. You should spend more on the anomalous effect, which is the main of it as an SCP.

Next, from the article, this is a snail that moves at an unknown speed to its target no matter what and is indestructible. There are a lot of gaps in this article.

How does it kill people? I see you have tried for the blackboxing route, but the result can get borderline farcical as I can choose to replace the blackboxes with things that don't make sense. In that sense, the problem lies in the lack of buildup in your delivery. You went for blackbox straight away without directing the readers' thoughts first.

How does it know who to target? Is it random? Is there a pattern to it? Is someone giving the orders? Is it doing it 'cos it wants to?

Fantastic, thank you for the feedback. My first SCP, so I'm expecting to make quite a few edits!

The idea I was going for is that this snail always moves inexorably (I'll do some snail research and find a normal speed) towards its 'target' - I don't really have much of an idea how it selects/is given that target though. Any ideas would be appreciated.

As for how it kills, I thought that a snail killing a full-grown human would be fairly ridiculous, so leaving the exact details up to the reader. Maybe I could add some more details to do with the snail's trail?

As for how it kills, I thought that a snail killing a full-grown human would be fairly ridiculous, so leaving the exact details up to the reader.

In this case, it is way too ludicrous that suspense of disbelief is in place. You would need to convince and show how can a snail kill people, and you can run the gauntlet from mundane to extraordinary here.

Convert the target's internal organs into snail slime? Turn the target into a shell for the snail? Cause a bullet to manifest in the target's brain? Alter probability such that the target is dead?

Stronger than a locomotive, (slightly) faster than warm molasses, able to crawl over moderately sized buildings in a single day… defender of class Gastropia…its supermansnail!
I think I like this.
I think I like this a lot, in fact. X3

Suggestions:

First off, I'd make the deaths almost totally mundane, with the only connection being all the victims are enemies of the snail world, and this snail. It saves some weirdness coupons, and fits with the idea of the best assassins making the deaths look accidental.

There are a ton of ways super-snail here could kill people like this using only stated or mildly anomalous super-snail powers: coating floors next to sharp objects with snail slime; pushing over heavy objects; brake failures due to frayed cables bearing wear marks consistent with a snail's radula…

You even could get really poetic with the deaths, too: the chemist dies of poisoning, the french chef gets killed by boiling oil, that sort of thing.

I can think of a couple other threats to the snail world for you, as well: the rare Tyrian Purple dye is produced by a couple species of marine snail- the collection process requires either agitating a large number of the snails to release tiny amounts of the dye over a long period of time, or crushing a large number of the snails to collect a small amount of the dye all at once. There are also pharmaceutical companies studying cone snails for their complex venom cocktails, which have adjustable, targeted, rapid-acting neurological effects. (they can paralyze a small fish in under a second, and some species can kill a human in two minutes) These studies, of course, require harvesting venom from captive snails, and anatomical studies of how the snail produces said venom cocktails.

To me it's almost better if you don't explain how it identifies enemies of the snail world. So long as all the victims are enemies of the snail kingdom, there's enough logic to the madness to make internal sense, and that's the important part. Beyond that, you can leave it open ended on whether this is the god of snails hearing the cries of its protectorate or it's powers include sensing threats to the snail world, or whatever.